was already spreading. Hopkin rushed forward to examine the wound, then rose to confront Hoare and Bennett.
'A clean shot through the right gluteus maximus,' Hopkin reported. 'I declare honor satisfied.' He bundled his patient ahead of him into the waiting chaise and departed at a brisk trot.
'Thank heaven. I certainly did not wish to shoot the poor Lobster dead,' said Hoare as he and Bennett strolled down the slope to the Swallowed Anchor so he could change his clothes. When he boarded his recent opponent's vessel he wanted to be impeccably uniformed.
'At least he angled himself so I missed one cheek,' he went on. 'He should be able to shit without too much pain.'
'It never occurred to you that you might be the one that was shot, then?'
Hoare shrugged.
'I never have been,' he said. 'I hardly know why.'
After a comfortable breakfast, Hoare and Gladden went out to Vantage from the pair-oared wherry they had engaged at the Portsmouth Hard. Had Hoare been the frigate's first himself, he would have had no complaint about her state. Lines were properly flemished down, the guns bowsed up to their ports, topsails given a snug harbor furl.
As Vantage's first, David Courtney commanded her until the Admiralty replaced the late Captain Hay. Mr. Courtney received Bennett's letter and welcomed them cordially enough. Mr. Wallace of the Marines was not about Vantage's deck. He was abed in his tiny cabin, face down, under the surgeon's care.
Mr. Courtney was overburdened with the need to make decisions about stowage, absent boatswain's supplies gone adrift, the disciplining of a distracted new hand, fresh from the plow.
'The foolish lad struck a boatswain's mate,' Mr. Courtney said. 'Admitted it. 'Strook 'im back, zur,' he told me.
'As you know, gentlemen,' Courtney continued, 'this could mean death for him. That would not do at all at this early stage of our life together as shipmates-not at all. I must catch Gower, the petty officer in the case, and persuade him to put it about that the blow was accidental.'
'Of course, sir,' Hoare whispered.
Upon learning his visitors' mission Mr. Courtney, with a routine apology, handed his visitors on to Peregrine Kingsley, second in the frigate. He instructed that officer to escort them to the late captain's cabin and see that any members of the ship's company they wished to question were brought there.
The two stopped on the quarterdeck long enough to quiz Mr. Kingsley He had nothing good to say about his late captain. Arthur Gladden had been by no means the only officer to suffer from Adam Hay's intemperate tongue. A few days before, Kingsley himself had withstood a half-hour diatribe on his slipshod work aboard and his whoremasterly work ashore. But unlike Arthur Gladden, Kingsley had kept tongue and temper in hand and had escaped undamaged except in his pride.
'He could say what he pleased about me performance as one of his officers,' said Kingsley, 'but he had no business criticizin' me as a man of parts. Me parts are me own business, damn him,' he said. He sounded, Hoare thought, a trifle smug.
Hoare already knew this swarthy, saturnine officer by reputation. He had hired a little sailing shallop that he kept in the same slip where Hoare kept Insupportable. Kingsley was known to be a 'man of parts' indeed, a ready and randy man with busy privates. He apparently cared nothing for a female's age or her looks as long as she was usable. Many hearts would weep for Peregrine Kingsley when Vantage sailed. There was a rumor that one heart in particular, one that should have been devoted to its owner's husband, was heavily smitten. However, the woman's name had not reached Hoare.
Mr. Kingsley had witnessed Arthur Gladden's flight from the cabin and had been one of the fascinated crowd that invaded it when word of the murder spread. That was all he knew, he said. Now, would the gentlemen mind if he deputized an intelligent midshipman to act as messenger for them? Things were a trifle busy aboard Vantage, as they may have noticed, and he had ten green gun crews to whip into shape.
The cabin reeked of stale shellfish and old tobacco smoke. Andrew Watt, captain's clerk, was already there, leafing anxiously through the papers littering his late master's table.
'A file is missing,' he said accusingly as the visitors entered.
'What sort of file?' Hoare asked.
'The file of Captain Hay's personal correspondence. There were several letters in it: one from Mrs. Hay ashore, several from tradesmen, and one which I could place in no category. The writing appeared to be that of a woman-self-taught, perhaps.'
'You are a student of handwriting, Mr. Watt?' Hoare whispered.
'Any man of my trade must attune himself to various scripts, sir,' the clerk said. 'But I confess I have made a somewhat deeper study of the writing art than most of my associates.
'Interesting,' murmured Hoare soundlessly.
Mr. Watt's eyes dropped to his hands.
'Yes?' Hoare whispered.
'I did not read them, of course, except that… The one from Captain Hay's wife. I assure you that under ordinary circumstances I would not have dreamed of reading it. I may not be a gentleman, but I try to behave as if I were. It was the enclosure with her letter which caused me to depart from propriety. Frankly, gentlemen, I am no longer ashamed that I did so.'
'Why?'
'In my service to Captain Hay, Mr. Hoare, I have occasionally dealt with highly confidential matters-matters so confidential, in fact, that they were recorded in ciphers. Captain Hay entrusted their decipherment to me. The enclosure with Mrs. Hay's letter to her husband was such a ciphered message. I could tell at a glance that it was not enciphered in any way familiar to me. Its presence, and that alone, led me to read Mrs. Hay's letter.
'It was no more than a note. As far as I recall, it read in part as follows:
''I found this in his uniform pocket last night. I know the sort of thing it is, and I do not believe he should be in possession of such a thing. But perhaps you gave it to him in connection with Vantage.''
'There was more, but nothing of a nature that would bear on this unhappy affair.'
'What do you make of that letter?' Hoare asked.
Obviously distressed, Mr. Watt shrugged. 'I really do not know what to make of it, sir,' he said. 'If we knew who 'he' was… but the letter gives us no clue.'
As a matter of fact, Hoare said to himself, the letter from wife to husband seemed to imply that 'he'-whoever he was-was Mrs. Hay's lover, and known by the captain to be such. Here was an unwanted complication, and a doubly cryptic one at that.
'And the letter from the 'uneducated woman,' Mr. Watt?'
'It appeared to be a threatening letter, sir. She appeared to want money for revealing something to the captain, or perhaps for not revealing it to someone else. I do not know which was the case, if either.'
'Well, then, Mr. Watt…' Hoare sighed. 'Tell Mr. Gladden and me, in your own words, about the events of Friday night.'
'I came aft at seven bells, gentlemen, to deliver some dispatches which I had decoded for the captain. There was no guard at the cabin door, so I knocked twice and entered.'
'No guard, Mr. Watt? Was it not Captain Hay's standing order to have guards at his door and the spirits locker?'
'Yes, sir. But the Marine contingent was new-joined and may have been a bit confused, I think.'
'Unheard of,' Gladden said. 'Never, never does one leave those posts unmanned.'
'Very good, Mr. Watt,' Hoare whispered. 'Carry on with your story, if you please.'
'I stepped directly into a sticky, slippery mess.' Mr. Watt's voice trembled. 'I found Captain Hay just outside the quarter-gallery. He was lying on his face in a trail of blood, as though he had been struck down near his cabin door. The blood flowed from a wound under his right shoulder blade.
'I knelt down beside him, sir, to see if there was anything I could do. I heard him say something about 'the
